Internet usage drives portals' growth in India

MUMBAI, INDIA: The Internet usage growth in India has been largely driven by broadband as well as mobile Internet.

According to ViziSence, an online audience and ad-measurement platform, the rise in Internet usage has positively impacted portals' growth across 20 categories in India over past one year and claimed 30-60 per cent growth of these portals. These portal categories include email, online gaming, mobile, b2b commerce, e-commerce, travel, service providers and others.

100 million users for Broadband, mobile Internet

“In India, Internet user base grew by 35 per over last year and the Internet penetration combining broadband and mobile Internet have touched over 100 million users, which is around 7-8 per cent of the 1.2 billion population,” said Amit Bhartiya, ViziSense business head. 

As per ViziSense’s analysis, email space in India is dominated by Gmail, followed by Yahoo and Rediffmail. Gmail with 32.70 million users overtook Yahoomail by 30 per cent user growth in April 2011.

“Traditionally, if we look 5-7 years back, users were having email IDs of Yahoo, Hotmail and others, but now it has changed as Gmail offers more storage space and features such as reliability, security and mail bandwidth to users,” Bharitya explained.  

Yahoo topped in the website category  

However, Yahoo.com topped with 39.80 million users in the website category, followed by Rediff.com, In.com, Indiatimes.com and MSN.com.

Other portal categories such as travel, b2b and e-commerce gained more popularity among users. Travel portal category registered 40 per cent overall growth dominated by Makemytrip.com and IRCTC.co.in.  

While the online travel tickets and booking has been highly popular among users in India, the e-commerce portal categories such as Snapdeal.com, Bagittoday.com, Homeshop18.com, Amazon.com and others reported more user base and tractions.

Snapdeal.com topped the slot with 9.24 million users, while Bagittoday.com with 3.49 million users came second and Homeshop18.com remained at third spot, according to ViziSense analysis.

“Users are transacting or purchasing goods or items online largely due to value proposition of merchandise, brands’ discounts, choices and good service quality. Today, nobody is shy of online transactions and the transaction range has moved from Rs.2,000-4,000 to Rs.20,000-50,000 today,” Bhartiya said.  

Brands offering discounts deals, group buying and sale schemes have broken barrier to purchase online, he pointed out. “The revenue of portals through ads, online marketing and e-commerce has grown 60-80 per cent and has created a new area of economics,” added  Bhartiya.

Online gaming sites Ibibo.com, Zapak.com and Zyanga.com attracted 3.93, 1.45 and 1.29 million users respectively. While, all the portals across 20 categories witnessed 30-60 per cent growth, the social media growth doubled, ViziSense claimed.

Facebook continued to hold edge over Orkut and Linkedin. “6-7 years back, our entry on the Internet was primarily via email as a communication means but now it's social media first and these social tools are likely to lower email usage for communication,” Bhartiya observed. 

Behind the strong portals’ growth driven by users, Bharitya reckoned that Indian youths between 18-35 years are playing a significant role on Internet usage and consumption. “Among Internet usage, 25-35 per cent traffic comes from tier I and tier II cities and availability of data cards, broadband connections and adoption of smart phones are also pushing this usage,” he said.